Parenting as a competitive sport | Joanne

In Lucinda Rosenfeld’s Class, which satirizes privileged, perfectionist Brooklynites, “parent is both a verb and a competitive sport,” writes Sarah Lyall in a New York Times review.

Karen who works for a non-profit, and her husband, a housing advocate, send their child, Ruby, to a public school where whites are a minority. But uber-liberal Karen is dismayed by Ruby’s black classmates with “beaded braids, buzz cuts and neon backpacks” and oddly spelled names. Their daughter is bullied.

She forges documents to send Ruby to Mather, the white school a few blocks away. The new school “has…